She flashed toward him.
The katana moved faster than thought, the edge aimed at his throat. Inches away. Less than inches. She could already see the blade connecting, could already picture the spray of blood, the look of surprise on his face.
His pupils followed her.
That was the first sign that something was wrong. His eyes tracked her movement, not after she had struck, but during. In real time. As if her speed was nothing special. As if he could see her perfectly well.
His smirk did not move. It stayed frozen on his face, confident, amused, as if she was a child showing off a party trick.
A huge sword appeared in his hand.
Subaru did not see where it came from. One moment his hand was empty. The next, a massive blade filled her vision, longer than her entire body, wider than her torso. It moved toward her in an arc, too fast to follow, too fast to dodge.
She barely had time to react before it passed through her.
Huh?
The world tilted. She saw her lower half still standing, the legs planted on the ground, the boots covered in mud and blood. She saw her upper half falling, the katana slipping from her fingers, the turban coming loose from her head.
Two halves of Subaru hit the ground.
The tall demon walked forward, his boots stepping over the scattered remains. He bent down and picked up her upper half, lifting it by the collar of her dress. Intestines and blood fell from the severed torso, dark and wet, splattering against the leaves.
He looked at her face. Her eyes were still open, still seeing, still processing what had happened. He stared at her with an expression of deep disappointment, as if she had promised him something valuable and delivered nothing.
"What a failure," he said.
Subaru wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him that she was not a failure, that she had killed a dozen of his soldiers, that she had survived things he could not imagine. But her mouth would not move. Her lungs would not draw breath. Her body was no longer a body. It was just meat, falling apart, fading into the same dark mist that covered the other dead demons.
Again, she thought. I died again.
But this time was different. This time, she had not been killed by a human. She had been killed by a demon. A demon with a power that looked very similar to her own. The ability to conjure weapons from nothing. The ability to strike faster than the eye could follow.
He is like me, she realized, as the darkness closed in. Or maybe I am like him.
The tall demon dropped her upper half and turned away. He looked out at the forest, at the battle still raging, at the soldiers fighting and dying and killing.
"Disappointing," he said.
Then the world went black.
Subaru gasped back to existence. The air rushed into her lungs like water into a cracked boat, filling her, drowning her, forcing her to remember that she was alive again. Her head spun. Her vision blurred. The forest looked the same as before, the same trees, the same shadows, the same gray sky through the branches.
Calm down, she told herself. Calm down. Panic will not help. Panic will just get you killed faster.
But her heart would not listen. It pounded against her ribs, loud and frantic, a drumbeat of fear that she could not quiet.
That guy.
The demon stepped out of the woods into the clearing. The same tall figure. The same light colored hair. The same scar across his right eye. He moved with the same easy confidence, the same casual stride, as if he had all the time in the world and nothing in it that could hurt him.
I am stuck. In another loop. Shit, shit, shit.
Subaru clenched her teeth. Her hands trembled slightly, but she forced them still. She had been through this before, too many times, with the red haired boy in the forest. Loops were not new. Death was not new. The fear was familiar, old, almost comfortable in its familiarity.
But that did not make it easier.
She focused her mana and dismissed the katana and scabbard. The weapons dissolved into particles of light, returning to her core, replenishing a small portion of what she had spent. She had used about thirty percent of her mana reserves in the last loop. Not a huge amount. Not nothing. She could fight at full strength for a while longer. But not forever.
This is a boss fight, she thought. A real boss fight. Like in a video game. Except I cannot not-do-it. I just die and try again until I figure out the pattern.
The demon had summoned a huge cleaver to cut her down. A blade larger than her entire body, appearing from nowhere, swinging faster than she could track. That was his power. Mana constructs. Or maybe summoning magic. She was not sure which.
What can I do against him? she wondered. Can he only summon that sword? Or can he create other things too? An axe? A spear? A bow?
He was very fast too. Faster than her. That was the most frightening part. Even with the speed of Hiten Mitsurugi, even with the technique that had let her cut down a dozen lesser demons, she could not match him. His eyes had followed her blade. His body had moved before her strike landed.
He is stronger than me. Faster than me. More experienced than me. And he thinks I am someone named Linie.
She looked up. The demon was watching her, his head tilted, his grin still in place. But there was something different in his eyes now. Interest. Curiosity. The same look a cat might give a mouse that had done something unexpected.
"The look in your eyes," he said. "I like it. You are analyzing how to fight me, are you not? Interesting."
Subaru kept her composure. She straightened her back. She met his gaze without flinching, even though every instinct screamed at her to run.
"Yup," she said. "I guess."
He laughed, short and sharp. "You seem to have picked up a variety of expressions from humans. I wonder how you learned to copy so much."
Subaru shrugged, as if his words meant nothing, as if she was not terrified down to her bones. "Well, humans are interesting creatures, are they not?"
The demon's grin widened. "Is that why you disguised yourself as one?"
Subaru did not answer. The question hung in the air between them, heavy and dangerous. She could not confirm it. She could not deny it. Either answer might give him something he could use.
He waved his hand, dismissing the question. "Well, not that I care much." He took a step closer. "I heard that you beat Wirt."
"It was a close call," Subaru said.
"Really?" He raised an eyebrow. "I was told 'she outclassed him'." He cracked his knuckles, the sound sharp in the quiet clearing. "Well, show me what you have got."
Subaru forced a smile onto her face. It felt wrong, stretched, like a mask that did not quite fit. "Now, now," she said, her voice light, almost playful, "do you really want to see? You might regret it, old man."
Inside, she was screaming. Every part of her wanted to run, to hide, to wake up from this nightmare and find herself back in her room with her posters and her computer and her boring, safe, ordinary life. But she could not run. There was nowhere to go. The loop would just bring her back.
The demon stared at her for a long moment. His expression did not change, but something flickered behind his eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or amusement. Or something else she could not name.
Then he laughed. A real laugh, loud and genuine, the sound of someone who had just been pleasantly surprised.
"How interesting, Linie," he said. "I imagined I would see anyone other than Solitär mimicking humans so closely." His smile faded. "Well. Enough talk."
He vanished.
Subaru had a split second to respond. Less than a split second. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, too fast to follow, too fast to dodge.
He was before her. His fist was inches away from her face.
Her eyes widened. Her body moved on instinct, arms coming up to block, crossing in front of her face like a shield. The impact hit her arms and traveled through her whole body, shaking her bones, rattling her teeth. She skidded backward, boots digging into the dirt, leaving furrows in the ground.
But he was already upon her again. Another punch. She blocked. Another. She blocked again. Each strike sent shockwaves through her arms, through her chest, through her skull.
Erfassen can copy things, she thought, but raw mana can reinforce things too.
She realized it just as she somehow endured the attack. She was pushing mana into her arms, into her bones, into her skin, strengthening herself against the blows. It was not a technique she had learned. It was instinct, pure and desperate, the body's knowledge of how to survive.
The ground beneath her feet shattered. Cracks spread outward like a double spiderweb, the dirt and grass splitting apart under the force of the demon's strikes. Subaru held on, barely, her arms aching, her vision blurring.
Then he kicked her.
Her body folded around his boot, the impact lifting her off the ground and sending her flying backward. Trees blurred past. The world spun. She crashed into something hard, something that stopped her momentum with a sudden, horrible finality.
She looked down.
A tree branch had pierced her torso. It went through her back and out her front, thick and splintered, covered in red blood that was her blood. She was impaled, stuck, her body hanging from the branch like a piece of meat on a hook.
Shit, she thought. Shit, shit, shit.
The demon walked toward her. His boots crunched against the broken ground. His expression was the same as before, the same look of disappointment that she had seen in the last loop. As if she had failed a test she had not known she was taking.
He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the scar on his eye, the points of his teeth, the cold emptiness behind his grin.
"What a failure," he said.
Subaru's breath came in shallow gasps. Blood dripped from her mouth, from her nose, from the wound in her stomach. The world was growing dark at the edges, fading like a painting left in the rain.
"W-who," she forced out, her voice weak, barely a whisper. "Who are you?"
He looked perplexed for a second. His brow furrowed. His head tilted. As if she had asked a question with an obvious answer, an answer that everyone should know.
"Did you lose your memories?" he asked. "Like humans do sometimes?" He paused, considering. "Well, that explains some things."
Subaru's vision was fading fast. The darkness was closing in, swallowing the trees, the sky, the demon's face. But she needed to know. She needed a name. Something to hold onto. Something to carry into the next loop.
"What is your name?" she asked.
The demon looked at her. His expression did not change. If anything, it grew colder, more distant, as if she had just proven that she was not worth his time.
"You are not even worthy of my name anymore," he said.
He reached out. His hand closed around her skull. His fingers pressed against her temples, cold and hard, like iron bands.
Then he crushed it.
The world ended. Darkness swallowed everything. And Subaru was gone.